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Letter From London September 4, 2005 The Reverend Kenneth Torquil MacLean Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist Church Bethesda, Maryland For four weeks this past month I was in London and almost every day went through the Stockwell station on the Northern Line of the London Underground. That is where a young Brazilian, Jean Charles de Menezes, was killed by police on July 22. What is most shocking about this was the disparity between the original explanations given by the authorities and the facts which ultimately emerged. We were told that Mr. de Menezes was being followed from a house under surveillance with a definite tie to the bombings of July 7, that he was told to stop by police, that he was wearing a large coat, inappropriate to the weather, and that he vaulted over the turnstile and ran to get on the train, tripped and was overtaken by police officers who immediately pumped seven bullets into his head. What gradually emerged was that he lived in a house which was being watched because one of the bombers had left a gym pass card with the address of that house. He was not wearing a large coat; he did not vault over the turnstile but went through with his tube pass, stopping to pick up a paper on the way; he got on the train and was seated and restrained by an undercover policeman when he was shot. This week it emerged that the gym pass belonged to another resident of the house who had loaned it to one of the bombers, whom he knew slightly. The policeman who was watching the house was relieving himself when de Menezes came out and so was not available to let the others know that this was not the man they were watching for. There were several units and personnel involved and some question about the chain of command, but the strategy was clear: to prevent a suicide terrorist from detonating a bomb in a crowded situation, he must be killed instantly before he can set anything off. This was the procedure adopted by the security apparatus in the previous two weeks in order to protect the public. There have been some calls, from de Menezes’ family and their lawyers, for resignation of the police commissioner, but the Guardian newspaper has cautioned against any such initiative before the final report of the investigating commission is out. There will be a continuing coverage of this single tragedy for some time as the British people and government work out their ultimate response to the events of July 8, and 22. And there are many who will not be satisfied until there is full disclosure of what happened and who is responsible. The British are different from us. I learn that over and over, in language, in custom, in history, and in ways of reacting. On a very nice early evening I suggested to Terry that we take our drinks and chips outside, as we often to, but this time I suggested that we have them in the yard. “Yard??” he said. “You mean, in the garden? It isn’t the yard.” “Well, at Harvard, it has been the Yard for over three hundred and fifty years,” I countered. “And do you think that is a long time?” When we remember all the flags and bumper stickers that blossomed out all over America after 9/11 and the declaration of the “war on terrorism” and all the changes and initiatives that flowed from that, we realize that the events happened in New York and Washington, but they evoked a basic psychological response from many people all over our country that clearly seemed to recognize that we were all under attack. It became important for many to make some display of patriotic and/or religious devotion and trust. The British do no do that. There were no flags or bumper stickers; instead, everywhere, from the Queen on down, there was a determination to go on with life as before, not to be turned aside from the normal routines of work and family, school and shopping and travel. They reminded us that they had lived with this for years through the struggles with the IRA over North Ireland. I always think of this when I realize that in a tube or railroad station there is no place to toss a candy wrapper or discarded newspaper because all the trash receptacles have been removed; they were places to put bombs. Though the newspapers were full of the events of July and their aftermath, it did not often come up in ordinary conversation unless I brought it up. Of course the British are dealing with a range of problems which are different from ours. I had not realized the extent to which several streams of immigration have changed the face of the United Kingdom. Several governments had pushed policies of welcoming large numbers of people into Britain, first from the countries of the British Commonwealth, and more recently from the members of the European Community, especially from the former communist countries of Eastern Europe. One of the issues being hotly debated is multiculturalism, the encouragement given to immigrant groups to maintain their group identity when they settled in Britain and the other countries of Western Europe. They could live in their own areas of the cities, continue their language and religious customs, and eventually they would integrate into the larger life of the country, enriching its culture with their contributions. This was based on an attitude of tolerance for diversity, which found different expression in America, where there has usually been much greater pressure to “become American,” and accept the values associated with what that means. Britain does not have the strong separation between church and state that we have, and there has been funding available for religious schools, even though a very small minority, like 2%, of the population attend church or mosque or synagogue regularly. The greatest shock of the recent bombings associated with the identity of the bombers was that three out of four of the July 7 terrorists had been born and raised in England. How could people who were born and raised here and who were not without education and job opportunities so turn against their identity as British that they would be willing to give their lives to kill random groups of their neighbors? As David Rieff says in the column from which I read: “….the news could scarcely be worse. What Europeans are waking up to is a difficult truth: The immigrants who began coming to Europe in the 1950’s because European governments and businesses encouraged their mass migration, are profoundly alienated from European society for reasons that have little to do with the Middle East and everything to do with Europe. “This alienation is cultural, historical, and above all religious, as much if not more than it is political. Immigrants who were drawn to Europe because of the Continent’s economic success are in rebellion against the cultural, social and even psychological sources of that success. . . Some find their traditional religious values scorned, while others find themselves alienated by the independence of women, with all its implications for the future of the ‘traditional’ Muslim family.” British and other Western European countries need the immigrants because their own birthrates are falling steadily and they need workers to sustain their economies, but they are not going to change their own values, like the equality of women, to accommodate the Muslims. The other major issue getting great political and media coverage is what to do about the religious leaders who have been preaching a gospel of hate and provoking and encouraging violence. The immediate reaction, from Tony Blair on down, is “get rid of them; deport them.” There are two obstacles: the idea of free speech and, in the face of British strong values for human rights, how can they deport people for acts which have not, so far, been defined as crimes? Not only do British courts take a very dim view of arbitrary deportation of persons, many of whom are British citizens, but the European Union has some very strong provisions for guaranteeing human rights. Another difficulty is the laws against deporting anyone to a country where he or she may be tortured or executed. To deal with that, France and Britain have worked with other countries, like Algeria, Egypt, and Syria, to negotiate agreements that particular persons will not be tortured or executed if they are sent back there, but human rights groups are skeptical of such agreements and insist that there must be provisions for monitoring what happens to such people after they are deported. It seems to me that the British are struggling in a very open way, at least in the press, with what they need to do to make their people secure. The effort is complicated by a perceived lack of credibility of the government which told them that Iraq was a threat with weapons of mass destruction and ties to Al Quaeda. It is also complicated by the need to confront the difference between being racist and being able to criticize a religious or national group. It is like criticizing a particular policy of the state of Israel without being anti-Semitic. So the British are trying to relate better to the Muslim people and communities in their midst to deal with real dangers without scape-goating or stigmatizing a whole group. Two weeks ago in the service of the Roslyn Hill Unitarian Church in London it was announced that there would be a meeting after church of those who were reaching out to Muslim groups and leaders in their area, and about a quarter of the congregation joined that meeting. I think that we seldom realize to what extent our personal identity is tied up in our nationality. We have become more aware in recent decades of what it means for us to be male or female, but I think we are not so sophisticated about what it means to be an American. Because there is a great deal of sentimental political and patriotic blather about being American, we can too easily dismiss it without considering what its fundamental significance really is. Until there is a crisis which confronts us with a jarring, discordant reality which does not fit into the image of being an American that we have taken for granted, we do not usually examine that part of our personal identity. When something does happen that violates our sense of the American way, we can either deny it, or justify it on the grounds that the threat against us is so great, or we can protest if it makes us uncomfortable enough. And just as I saw Britons reacting in all these ways to the killing of the innocent Brazilian, I see Americans reacting in the same ways to the growing evidence of the reality of torture in Abu Graib and Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay. The evidence comes from organizations like Amnesty International, the Red Cross, the FBI, and the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, and responsible reporters like Seymour Hersh. Bill Schulz, former president of our denomination, has been the head of the American branch of Amnesty International for a dozen years. It is one of a few organizations to which I make a monthly contribution, because I believe there is nothing more important than stopping torture wherever it occurs. Our Service Committee, under the leadership of Charlie Clements, has adopted Stop Torture as one of its three major program areas, and Jennifer Harbury is heading that effort. I urge you to listen to what they have to say. I had a conversation last month with a young serviceman I have known for some years, someone whose courage and devotion to this country I respect very much. He asked, “Why do the people at this conference get so upset about these few instances of acts by Americans when what the insurgents are doing, blowing up innocent people every day, is so much worse?” My response is that I have no control or influence over what those people do, but when my government does it then that involves me, and, in a sense, I am doing it. It is in conflict with everything I believe, as a human being, and as an American. There is too much credible evidence for me to deny it; there is no slogan like “the war on terror” that can let me justify it; and my single voice cannot carry far enough to stop it. But support the organizations that can make a difference is what I can do and still continue to be who I am. |
Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist
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